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Or you could just trust me. [He'll admit to being a little peevish on the delivery there. But who could blame him?] Anyway, you're not a magician. It matters less if you're not having magic slung at you or trying to poke spirits in sensitive places.

I have magic flung at me plenty.

Then I suppose it's a good thing you've such a sporty nickname, eh?

[An exaggerated huff.]

Your birth name is like a magnet. Magic is drawn to it. Invoking it makes an attack that much more potent. The semantics of it would all be far too complicated for someone like yourself, but the long and the short of it is that anyone who knows it can beat your more easily and can defend themselves from anything you can do more handily. It's why magicians go to such pains to hide theirs. It's why they can bind spirits whose names they know, and why we're compelled to follow their charge.

But I know -

[ Oh. ]

Fake names. The names of magicians - Mandrake and Makepeace and Tallow and all them - they're made up. Is that it?

[He pants out an appalled sound.] Of course they are. So feel free to judge any one of them who's name is especially absurd. Makepeace! What a load of--

[A clattering noise pierces through the sending crystal. It's followed immediately by...

Well, by nothing at all.]

[ At first she thinks he's censored himself. But then, after a moment, she remembers: Bartimaeus is foul-mouthed and smutty-minded. He'd never censor himself. ]

Hullo?

[ With growing worry - ]

Are you all right?

[No answer.

Maybe he's ignoring her in the most aggravating method possible?]

Bartimaeus? [ Torn between being anxious and furious: ]

Say something, won't you!

[A resounding silence answers, punctuated only by the ring of some distant bell marking the evening hour. Closer: a swelling of laughter, an indistinguishable bark of conversation underscored by the muffled sound of a fiddle. Then that too is muffled. A door opening and shutting. The sound of footsteps growing closer, then fading again.]

[ She lets loose a noise of frustration. He's screwing with her. He's obviously screwing with her. He's obviously not dead. But -

But. Why wouldn't he let her come and help? Why didn't she pester him till she knew where he was? He might be dead now. Or something. And she has no idea where he is.

So she gnaws on her knuckle, waiting, hoping he'll say something. And if not... ]

[Lucky for both of them that it doesn't come to that then.

All at once, there is the sound of something slapping against the ground very near by. A scraping. A jostling. Breathlessly and rather irritated:]

--there you are. How you people remember to hold on to anything while you're walking around is beyond me. Do you realize how useless it is being stuck with two hands? Are you still there, Kitty?

Edited 2019-03-20 22:56 (UTC)

[ She all but shrieks when he starts speaking again. In her mind, she'd resigned herself to the thought that something truly dire and awful had occurred; this, therefore, constitutes a very unexpected resurrection. ]

What - What is wrong with you?

[Somewhere in Kirkwall, a young man is standing in an alley at the bottom of a rickety ladder leading up on to a series of sketchy rooftops, across which he's just double backed across and descended from when he'd noticed the little string about his neck had lost the crystal at the end of it, thanks - he's certain - in part to the desperate tug it'd recieved from a certain determined Lowtown mugger immediately prior to him being stabbed by own knife. This young man makes a distinctly flabbergasted noise.]

What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me! After all the effort I've put into carrying on this conversation while I've been busy, and this is the thanks I get?

Edited 2019-03-20 23:26 (UTC)